8/18/2008

Ubuntu on my Eee 1000

Last week I got an Asus Eee 1000H, and this weekend I installed Ubuntu on it (this is the "Windows" version and came with XP installed--NewEgg had a $100 instant rebate on the 1000H). Thanks to some fantastic software and how-tos from the community, it was mostly straightforward.

The following is not a how-to. I'm documenting my experiences so that knowlegeable users can compare, and so that I have a reference for future linuxy exploits.

I got a 4 GB flash drive and turned it into an Ubuntu Live USB. Right on the Eee, I downloaded the Ubuntu ISO via bittorrent (linked on the get Ubuntu Eee page) and UNetbootin, and used UNetbootin to put the ISO stuff on the flash drive. I also downloaded the Ubuntu Eeee kernel from these installing the Ubuntu-eee kernel manually which should fix Eees with Ubuntu but no internet access.

I saw instructions to hit escape during startup to switch the boot device, but it wasn't working for me, so hitting f2 (over and over) let me enter the BIOS and switch the boot device.

Originally I couldn't seem to boot to the flash drive... to make it work I dumped the contents of the USBTest.zip file from this Pen Drive Linux boot test on my freshly formatted flash drive, running the makeboot.bat file (from the flash drive only!) and then putting the Ubuntu ISO on again with UNetbootin (and choosing to overwrite the exisiting syslinux). So that worked, but may not have been necessary, because I also twiddled some BIOS settings--I'm a total PC noob, and I wasn't exactly sure what needed to be changed.

In the BIOS I also disabled "quick boot" and "quiet boot" for the time being. I re-enabled "quick boot" but I haven't paid attention to any difference it might make.

I installed Ubuntu over the whole Windows partition.

Once I rebooted into my new Ubuntu installation, my flash drive refused to automount--it kept saying "Invalid mount option". It turned out that the fstab (a file that describes how the OS should deal with mounting devices) was messed up. Apparently a bunch of Ubuntu users were having similar issues after installing 8.04.1. My fstab had my USB devices trying to mount as a CDROM (I suspect because Ubuntu assumed that my install device was a CDROM rather than a flash drive).

First of all I read this page on understanding and editing fstab. fstab is a plain text file located at /etc/fstab. You can only edit it with root permissions, because messing it up can prevent your system from booting.

Basically, I had a line that looked like this:

/dev/sdb1 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

that needed to look like this:

/dev/sdb1 /media/usb auto auto,user,exec,rw,utf8 0 0

I examined the fstab with:

tail /etc/fstab

I confirmed the device path (in this case, "/dev/sdb1") by plugging in my USB drive, opening a terminal, and typing:

sudo fdisk -l

This will prompt for a password, then spit out a block of info about each available drive; the block describing my 4 GB flash drive looked like this (note the "device" and "system", which in this case are "/dev/sdb1" and "W95 FAT32" respectively):

fish list

8/12/2008

subnotebook purchase

Since I won't be able to get the MSI Wind before I go out of the country at the end of the month, I need to get something else to travel with (am not taking my main laptop out of the country with current border policies). I almost got the HP Mini-Note, but then I settled on the larger/faster Asus eee 1000. Pros: ships now. Cons: having to settle.

the future of shopping malls: take 'em away

I think the fallacy here is that the mall construction is fundamentally shitty. First, malls are built with a short lifespan in mind--I'd guess 20 years or so. Second, they're built without considering environmental factors; for example, they have flat roofs and the plan for dealing with snow is to heat the building enough to melt it off; they don't take advantage of solar energy for heat and light, or of trees for shade. If the power is out, you can't heat, cool, or light a mall. Runoff has nowhere to go. Third, many of them aren't accessible without a car: they're surrounded by acres of baking asphalt and have their own exit off the freeway. Unfortunately, malls are a sunk cost, the results of a series of horrible decisions that we need to move past rather than investing ourselves in revitalizing. Rip it up, recycle the parts, and put something green and growing there.